Tag: Shared Memory

Introduction:

Some times if the database shut down is not graceful, shared memory wont be released. In that case if you try to login and start the database you will get following error.

-bash-2.05b$ sqlplus /nolog
SQL*Plus: Release 8.1.7.0.0 – Production on Thu Jun 26 12:57:25 2008
(c) Copyright 2000 Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.
SQL> connect / as sysdba
ERROR:
ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel

To resolve such issues, you can check the shared memory and semaphores that are blocked by or locked by the defunct oracle processes. Before that here is the bried understanding of Shared memory segments and semaphores in UNIX.

Shared Memory Segments

Shared memory allows processes to access common structures and data by placing them in shared memory segments. It’s the fastest form of Interprocess Communication (IPC) available since no kernel involvement occurs when data is passed between the processes. In fact, data does not need to be copied between the processes.

Oracle uses shared memory segments for the Shared Global Area (SGA) which is an area of memory that is shared by Oracle processes. The size of the SGA has a significant impact to Oracle’s performance since it holds database buffer cache and much more.

To see all shared memory settings, execute:

-bash-3.00$ ipcs -lm

—— Shared Memory Limits ——–
max number of segments = 4096
max seg size (kbytes) = 4194303
max total shared memory (kbytes) = 8388608
min seg size (bytes) = 1

The max value of Shared Memory segment is decided by SHMMAX parameter.

ipcs -m will give you the shared memory segments, its size and which user owns the segment.

-bash-3.00$ ipcs -m

—— Shared Memory Segments ——–
key        shmid      owner      perms      bytes      nattch     status
0x0001ffb8 0          root      666        76         3
0x00025990 32769      root      666        8308       3
0x00027cb9 65538      root      666        132256     1
0x00027cba 98307      root      666        132256     1
0xf771930c 1277956    oracle01  660        2166358016 144

Semaphores

You can see semaphores setting using ipcs -ls

-bash-3.00$ ipcs -ls

—— Semaphore Limits ——–
max number of arrays = 1100
max semaphores per array = 1100
max semaphores system wide = 32000
max ops per semop call = 100
semaphore max value = 32767

SEMMSL parameter determinies the max size of semaphores.

You can see the various semaphores assigned to different processes using

-bash-3.00$ ipcs -s

—— Semaphore Arrays ——–
key        semid      owner      perms      nsems
0x00000000 393216     root      666        1
0x00000000 425985     root      666        1
0x00000000 458754     root      666        1
0x00000000 491523     root      666        1
0x0001ffb8 524292     root      666        1
0x000251c0 557061     root      666        1
0x000255a8 589830     root      666        1
0x00025990 622599     root      666        1
0x000278d1 655368     root      666        1
0x00027cb9 688137     root      666        1
0x000278d2 720906     root      666        1
0x00027cba 753675     root      666        1
0x26e55b68 3244044    oracle01  660        1004

You can also see the semaphores and Shared Memory Segments assigned to oracle processes using Oracle utility sysresv

-bash-3.00$ sysresv

IPC Resources for ORACLE_SID “tkr12r3m2” :
Shared Memory:
ID              KEY
1277956         0xf771930c
Semaphores:
ID              KEY
3244044         0x26e55b68
Oracle Instance alive for sid “tkr12r3m2”

If the instance is not alive you can remove the shared memory segments and semaphores using ipcrm command

ipcrm -m <Shared Memory ID (shmid)>

ipcrm -s <Semaphore ID (semid)>

Hope this helps !!